Friday, 17 May 2013

THE PROMETHEUS FACTOR

The recent death of Ray Harryhausen reminded me of some thoughts I once expressed in relation to stop-frame animation of the kind demonstrated in Ray's films...

There is a legend telling how the gods chose two brothers, Prometheus and Epimethius, to create the living things that would inhabit a planet which was beautiful to look at but, as yet, quite empty of life.

The brothers filled the world with their creations: birds soared above the mountains and the forests in a dazzling riot of coloured wings; shimmering fish darted through the rivers, lakes and seas; beasts huge and small, heavy and svelte, fast and slow, began to run and leap, bound, prowl and crawl, amble, waddle and lope through the woods, jungles and swamplands, across the fields, deserts and icy wastes of the new land.

To each creature, the brothers gave a gift: to some it was fleetness of foot, to others it was strength or cunning; some were given powerful teeth, some thick skins, some simply the grace of rare beauty.

Then Prometheus, unaided by his brother, conceived another idea: a being who would not be the fastest, strongest or most beautiful of creatures, but who would be the most intelligent of them all - Man.

Taking a lump of clay, Prometheus shaped and formed a figure that resembled the high gods themselves; a living image of the supreme powers who could stand upright upon two legs; who, though naked and vulnerable, would have the wisdom to clothe and protect itself; who, though set upon the earth, would have the desire to lift its head to the stars and dream...

There is another ancient story...

Yahweh, the God of the Jews, gathered the soil of the ground in his newly created world and formed from it the shape and likeness of a man. Then, breathing his all-powerful life-giving breath into its nostrils, this naked, vulnerable creature formed in the likeness of God came alive…

The creation story is found, with variations, in many different cultures and faiths: a symbolic picture, explaining not just the origin of man but also the
source of man's creativity.

Such mythologies run deep within our souls, causing us to endlessly re-enact them throughout our lives and even memorialise them in our death: when mighty rulers died in past ages, they surrounded themselves with clay figurines of children, servants and cattle, pottery armies of guardian warriors; still today the priest intones the solemn reminder, 'Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, from the earth we came and to the earth we shall return…'

No wonder such stories, myths and legends have provided such a rich, recurrent theme for
artists down the centuries and, in particular, through the work of the
three-dimensional animators who have taken their puppets, crafted from a
variety of materials from simple clay and precision-built metal
skeletons covered in foam rubber, and gifted them with the ability to
exhibit a range of emotions – menace, anger, joy, grief and loneliness –
that we immediately identify as being as being real, honest and true to
life.

And our identification is easily understood since, from childhood, we have played at being not the frail creatures plucked from earth, but the gods who are the creators; not the vulnerable but the powerful; not the recipients of life but life-givers. Give us a lump of clay or Plasticine as children – or, come to that, simply mud – and we will make for you a man or a woman –– or, indeed, a winged horse, a giant ape, a raging demon or rampaging dinosaur – that can hold within its fragile form all the passions, ambitions, dreams and despairs that are the lot of humankind and of whom Jehovah or Prometheus might have been justifiably proud.